Book Review: Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River

Abstract

rural Midwestern communities of LeClaire, Iowa, and Port Byron, Illinois, have attempted to sustain their communities through the creation of an annual festival featuring a tug-of-war contest between the towns that spans the Mississippi River. Any event that requires a 2700-foot rope and the United States Coast Guard to close the Mississippi River to maritime traffic is a remarkable accomplishment. However, Johnston argues that the festival is far more than just spectacle. By analyzing local newspaper and television coverage of the festival produced between 2000 and 2019, Johnston contends that these communities reimagine and reinvigorate their cultures and economies through Tug Fest. As residents and tourists attend the festival, they spend money, create and renew social bonds, and reimagine their collective pasts, presents, and futures. The social differences and inequalities that are central to the communities are also on display and potentially reorganized. In short, Tug Fest provides attendees an annual opportunity to transform and renew their communities in manners that help to sustain them while maintaining meaningful ties to the past. Chapter 1 places LeClaire, Port Byron, and Tug Fest within broader patterns of depopulation and deindustrialization that have characterized much of the rural Midwest over the past century. Johnston suggests that annual festivals like Tug Fest are especially significant to rural towns experiencing depopulation. Not only can festivals provide an economic boost through an influx of cash from tourists, but hese festivals provide comnize their cultures amidst shifting